Portland, Vancouver Custom Woodwork, Custom Cabinets, Boats, and Specialty Items | Harbor Woodworks

Small Boats

Boats
We specialize in building small boats from well-known designers. Harbor Woodworks is honored to be a recommended builder for both Australian designer Michael Storer and New Zealand’s John Welsford. In addition, we’ve built boats to designs from Jacques Mertens, Shorty Routh, and Phil Bolger. There are a number of other designers whose work we admire and whose boats we’d be happy to tackle, such as Sam Devlin, Selway-Fisher, the Atkins, Ian Oughtred, David Payne, Karl Stambaugh, Joel White, Ross Lillistone, and several others.

We build mostly in plywood and epoxy, which can include boats with chine logs, stitch & glue, multi-chine, glued lapstrake, and cold-molded. The smallest boat we’ve built so far is just under 8 feet long, and the largest just under 20 feet. We enjoy all sorts of boats, and particularly like building low-powered boats, sail boats, and pulling boats. If you need help picking out a design to suit your purposes, we can very likely advise you.

Components

Harbor Woodworks also builds many of the wooden components that boats need.

Spars - solid, hollow box sections, or birdsmouth
Foils- solid, hollow, staved, shaped, kick-up, or fixed
Floorboards & cabin soles
Tillers
Coamings and rubrails
Companionway doors or washboards
Blocks & cleats
Hatch Covers
Interiors

We can do the finish work… or leave that Zen-like delight to you. Typically, we use spar varnish (our favorite is Interlux #96, but we’re happy to work with any quality brand), Daly’s Sea-Fin oil, or Sikkens Cetol Marine. We're comfortable working with a range of oil-based and water based paints: traditional marine enamels; exterior enamels; 1 and 2-part polyurethanes.

Repairs

We also offer a variety of boat repair services.

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